Local actress Kimberly Chia and her husband Vincent Yeo, who owns a cleaning service, nearly fell victim to an alleged scam of nearly $16,000.

She warned her audience about the scheme in a TikTok video posted on Aug 29, prefacing it by saying: "If you're a small business owner or providing a service of some sort, please beware, okay? Because there's a new scam going around and it's so, so believable."

The 29-year-old said that the alleged scam involves someone claiming to be a teacher at a local secondary school who calls a business up asking for its services.

After booking the service, the alleged scammer called Yeo the next day asking for help with "something totally unrelated". He said the school wanted to buy some beds and gave them a contact to check on the price of beds, where Kimberly said the alleged scam started.

She then explained that the alleged scammer asked her husband if he could help the former purchase the beds "that he needs by today" and added that the school could not carry out the transaction due to a conflict between the principal and the supplier.

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The alleged scammer even promised a commission of $30 for each bed, and Yeo, who was suspicious, asked this alleged teacher to transfer the money to him first. The man then sent a screenshot of a purported transfer of $15,840 to Yeo.

"But as you guys know, for bank transfers and PayNow, the money should be in your bank account almost immediately, but the money wasn't in my husband's bank account at all, so that was the very first red flag," Kimberly added.

She added that the alleged scammer then tried to convince them that the money would be in their accounts in the next few hours because purportedly " the money is stuck in MOE (the Ministry of Education) because they're a school and they need approval".

Kimberly continued: "What happened to my husband is that the calls came in non-stop and one after another from [the alleged scammer] and from the bed supplier also. They will pressure you to transfer now so their deal can go through.

"So [the alleged scammer] will say they really need the beds now, they need them by this afternoon, then the bed supplier will say, 'My beds are gonna go out already, if you don't transfer now then the beds cannot go out at all'."

As Yeo refused to transfer the money, the 'bed supplier' tried to negotiate a deposit of $6,000. Upon his further refusals, he reduced it to $3,000 and then $2,000, which Yeo still declined to transfer. The alleged scammer then threatened Yeo that, if they couldn't transfer the money for the beds, he would not be able to use Yeo's cleaning services.

Yeo then checked with the secondary school, who told him that they had been receiving "calls that a scam like this is happening to them" for seven weeks.

"My husband's experience is that it's really very, very believable and if you're more of the kan cheong (nervous and harried) type of person, I really think you might actually fall for it," Kimberly explained.

"They don't give you the time to react at all and prey on business-minded people [who think they'd] be able to earn some quick cash."

Netizens commented on Kimberly's TikTok sharing that they had received similar calls.

"My mum is a business owner and this also happened to her," a comment read. "The scammer said that he's from an old folks' home and needed wheelchairs — there was this back and forth with the wheelchair suppliers."

Another read: "This happened to our ID (interior design) firm too but the 'school' called and asked us to purchase paints to paint their school."

"How I realised this is a scam is that he called my two companies and I was like, 'How is it possible both companies got recommended by a friend?'" a netizen wrote.

A comment also shared that schools usually pay through the Vendors@Gov service instead of making bank transfers.

"Edit a transaction, send the screenshot back to them. Tell them it will be in in a few hours too, lol," a netizen joked.

On Aug 20, Minister of State for the Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Social and Family Development Sun Xueling was at a multi-agency briefing on the government's anti-scam efforts.

An enhanced ScamShield app is now equipped with a new "Check for Scams" function, which uses artificial intelligence to identify and alert users about potential scam threats across platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, phone calls and other channels.

drimac@asiaone.com

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